What this is about: Watching all of the anime shows so you don’t have to! For more information about me and my reviews, click here for details on what I am reviewing.

Series Premise: Mawaru Penguindrum is a weekly television anime series starting in July 2011 from the creator of Revolutionary Girl Utena. Two older brothers take care of their ailing younger sister Himari, who is saved from death by a spirit residing in a penguin-shaped hat. With the assistance of three “helper-penguins” that only the three siblings can see, they must search for the mythical “Penguin Drum” in exchange for extending Himari’s life.

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Episode Summary: Girl pushed down the escalator has her memory wiped; Kanba somehow comes up with the money to save their home. Ringo’s having yet another bad day, and is invited over by Shouma and Himari, where Shouma requests that she hand over her diary. They get sucked into Himari’s “Survival Strategy”, where Ringo grabs the penguin hat and throws it away. As Himari collapses, Shouma and then Kanba rush off to retrieve the hat and save Himari.

My Impressions: Okay…wait, what? What’s up with the girl with the red penguin-ball slingshot, that sort of came out of nowhere. And how the hell did Kanba procure the scratch to pay off their house? Well, actually, that’s thing that I’m sort of liking about Mawaru Penguin Drum right now, is that it is still building up the complexity of the story and we now have several loose ends that need to be weaved into the story. And at this point I am actually confident that all will be fully explored and explained in the end, unlike some other shows that opened up various cans of worms and left me hanging (*coughcough*YumekuiMerry*coughcough*)

My love/hate relationship with Ringo swings over more to the love side, now that I feel that she’s really more of a pawn in the grander scheme of things, rather than an instigator of “fate”. Yes, she is such a deeply flawed personality, and I simultaneously want to slap some sense into her (yeah, schoolgirl crushes usually end *sooo* nicely) and I want to feel sorry for her at the same time. Yet, she is always fun to watch, albeit more in a trainwreck-no-I-can’t-look-away sort of way. Good lord, that girl has chutzpah, and I was rooting for her when she crawled her way back out of the drop-hole to deck Evil Penguin-Hat Himari. You go girl! (Even if everything you do seems to end in disaster.)

At this point, I cannot even guess exactly where the series is heading, it’s all so confusing. Normally I would think I’d be grousing about how so much remains unexplained after five episodes, but since I’m enjoying the ride, I don’t have much to complain about. And thankfully they seem to have returned back to the right mix of serious vs. humorous after the rather quirky fourth episode.

“Looks like I tuned in for a good episode. I love Ringo and her craziness, so it’s good to see her get to shine every now and then. Fate never turns out how she expects it to, but she still manages to bounce back. You have to admire someone with enough dedication to avoid falling into a hole and then muster up enough strength to punch a flouncy penguin lady. Now THAT, was an awesome scene: unexpected and dynamic.” – Metanorn

““Seizon Senryaku” is back and everything in the Mawaru Penguindrum world feels right again. Well, about as right as it can be with Ringo getting dragged into this alternate dimension for the very first time and making her mark on it almost immediately.” – Random Curiosity

“That was… just insane. No, seriously: this episode was completely mind-blowing. Even Utena wasn’t THIS good after just five episodes. And I know that Utena had more episodes and the strength of that series was how well it developed its characters and all, this is still something I did not see coming. This episode took the already amazing cast, and made it even better than it already was.” – Star Crossed Anime Blog